


Equal and Opposite

by AmandaRex



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 06:47:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5280803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmandaRex/pseuds/AmandaRex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As the Doctor discovered during the events of "The Runaway Bride", an excess of Huon particles can send you straight to the TARDIS if you're not careful. What if Rose carried enough residual Huon energy after absorbing the Heart of the TARDIS in "The Parting of the Ways" to pull her through the Void and back to the Doctor? (Takes place between "Evolution of the Daleks" and "The Lazarus Experiment".)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Teaser

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't the usual, happy reunion fic. Warnings for dark and unhappy moments.
> 
> Originally written in 2007, slightly modified in 2015 as I archive my old fics to AO3. Betaed back in the day by dynapink on LJ. Thanks to her, this makes a lot more sense than it did before she got her hands on it. :)

"So, when are you gonna stop pretending, then?" Martha asked him, forgetting until it was too late that nothing good ever seemed to come of trying to confront the Doctor. About stuff like this, anyway.

"What?" he said, looking up from the monitor he'd been scowling at to scowl at her instead.

"Nothing," she said quickly, suddenly feeling quite conspicuous, whereas a moment ago, she'd been completely ignorable.

"Pretending?"

She took a deep breath. In for a penny, in for a pound. "Pretending you're just 'taking me on one trip'."

"Well," he began, drawing out the word, and then he trailed off. She honestly began to wonder if he was about to break into a completely unrelated tangent, as she'd noticed he had a tendency to do, when he continued. "Clearly isn't true, is it? Or was. Wasn't true."

"Was?" she asked, only working out now that she should never have brought this up to him directly.

"Time I got you back, Doctor Jones." He winked at her as she steadfastly tried to keep the gentle smile she'd had on her face from breaking. "Earth needs a few good doctors, I can tell you that. Things I've seen..."

"I—"

"Yes, right, indeed. Right back to the moment after you got in the TARDIS, I think. No one will know you've been gone, except you. Solves the problem of finding you more clothes, as well. Works out brilliantly."

"Yeah," she said, swallowing hard. It felt like something that was supposed to be so much more was dying around her, but there was nothing she could do about it. She'd just gotten used to that very same futility in her medical training, having been faced with a patient no one on Earth could help a fair few times and having to stand there and watch them die. Futility seemed to be becoming a theme, of sorts, for her.

"Sorry if I've worn you out a bit. Things never seem to be simple, the places I go. Thoughts of lovely holidays turn into disasters around me more often than not." He shrugged, still yanking and pulling on various controls in that lanky, clueless-sexy way he had.

"I don't know," she answered, trying to charm him with humor one last time. "You didn't go on that bus holiday my mates and I took a few years back. Monster traffic jams are one thing, but there are a few blokes from Australia who would say my friends were much more of a disaster, I'll tell you."

The TARDIS shook under her feet, somehow seeming much less exciting now that it was taking her home.

Then the ripping sensation began in the core of her stomach, cold and hard and unforgiving. "Doctor!" she said, amazed at the choked quality of her own voice as it echoed back to her. She tried to open her eyes and find him, wondering if the same was happening to him.

She caught a snapshot of his surprised-looking face as he descended on her, his face suddenly too close to hers just as her world started to go white.

"Martha!" he screamed at her. "Martha Jones!"

"Why both names?" she croaked out, realizing too late what a supremely thick question it was, given her current circumstances.

He took her hand and raised it, his fingers brushing her wrist in an attempt to find her pulse. It drew her eye, wondering what he'd find there, if he'd know what was wrong with her.

She gasped, though she had trouble drawing the air to do it, when she saw her hand. There was a faint yellow glow around her, but she could see right through herself. The curve of his knee as he knelt next to her was visible through her arm.

"Martha, look at me!" he commanded, and she did. "I will stop this. I'm not losing you too!"

Her answer died on her lips as she felt herself fade, as though she was melting into the floor below her. She tried to make contact with him just once more, to let him know how much she'd enjoyed this short time they'd had traveling. She saw the look of concern and fear in his eyes, and she wondered if even he would be able to save her.

And then she was gone.


	2. Chapter 1

Rose turned over in her sleep, patting the pillow a few times and, when that didn't work, bunching it up a different way. Even in sleep, something felt a bit off to her. Ever since she'd found herself separated from the Doctor, everything had felt that way.

Just not quite like this.

She turned again, her legs twisting in the duvet covering her. It made her just uncomfortable enough that she roused from her dream. She still wasn't quite awake, but she floated in that half-aware, half-dream place that she normally only got to indulge in after hitting the snooze alarm.

Eventually, she grudgingly opened one eye to peek at the time. If it was late enough, she might as well get up and go into work. There was always some way to make herself useful there, and it was quickly becoming the only thing in this new world that was really giving her life meaning.

As her vision cleared, she found that her clock wasn't there. She blindly patted the area where her bedside table should be, thinking perhaps she'd knocked the clock to the ground with a flail of her arm, only to find the table missing as well.

She sat up, suddenly recognizing the metallic wall she'd found instead, feeling almost oily against her fingers. Though she was still drowsy and could barely focus on the smallish room, the clothes that littered the ground and the maddeningly flat and uncomfortable pillow she'd once thought she'd never see again were so familiar to her that she could cry.

Her eyes cleared as she set her feet on the ground, finding her slippers there. She put them on and stood up, walking shakily around the room, wondering what sort of dream this was and how long she'd be able to hold onto it before she woke to her "new" and still colorless life.

A few steps took her to the battered desk that had always sat in the far corner of her room. A few racy novels, nicked from her mum at one point or another, sat there. They were dog-eared and only half read, each one thrown aside when something more exciting had come up, which had been nearly every day she'd ever spent here.

She ran a finger over the cover of one of the books and came back with a generous portion of dust. She held her hand up and regarded it quizzically, unable to understand why she would dream of her room in this obviously long-disused state. It was as though she'd been gone, and for quite a long time.

A hoodie hung over the desk's chair. Feeling the chill, she took it and swung it over her shoulders, pushing her arms through the sleeves as she forcibly remembered the last time she'd worn it. Ages ago, back in her real life, she'd stepped one foot outside, felt the chill, and turned back right away. She dashed to her room and grabbed the first thing she'd found, then ran back to receive his joking admonishment for making them late.

She padded to the door and watched as her shaking hand found the knob, also cold to the touch and so real she nearly believed this wasn't all just a dream. After she stepped into the corridor, she promptly got lost twice as she tried to regain her bearings. She wasn't sure if the layout had changed simply because this was a dream, or because she'd been gone so long that her mind could no longer reconstruct the paths from memory.

After correcting yet another wrong turn, she saw a familiar glow ahead. Still greenish, she noticed, but not as sickly and alien-looking as she remembered it. She grew closer, step by step, and began to see a warm orange lighting the walls as well, eliminating a lot of the darkness and shadow that she'd grown accustomed to, all that time ago.

And there he was. She noticed his hair first, defiantly sticking up in every direction. He'd discarded his coat, now a misshapen blob on the ground, but his suit was different. It was blue now. She blinked, hardly believing it, because she'd never thought he'd give up that battered brown suit. Now she knew it all had to be a dream, a cruel trick of her subconscious, trying to get her to stay in bed and get some rest.

He was mumbling something as he went from control to control, his body contorting like an acrobat's as he worked. She couldn't hear what he was saying, so she moved closer.

"One minute she's here, and then she's gone. This is not happening again. I am not going to be responsible for—"

He broke off the litany abruptly as his head turned and he caught sight of her, framed by the meager light coming from the corridor.

"Hi," she said, gamely. "Just a dream, I know, but I just wanted to see you again for a bit before I woke up. Go back to..." she said, trailing off, waving her hand indistinctly at the TARDIS controls.

"Rose," he breathed, his eyes going wide. "I can't believe—"

"I know," Rose said, looking down at her feet. "I have this dream a lot, and that's always what you say."

"Rose," he repeated, reaching over to pull a lever that slowed the noise and the lights on the console, but never taking his eyes off of her.

"This is the best bit, coming up," she said, not really caring anymore that it was just a dream. This was the part where he'd leap over to her and gather her into his arms, pick her up, and then swing her around until she was dizzy.

"I...I just...are you real?" he said, walking slowly toward her. He stood in front of her, squinting and examining her from several angles. "I can't...there's no way. There was no way back."

"I know," she said. "It took a long time, but I finally realized there was no way you could come back for me," she babbled, wondering what was taking so long. Her dreams usually didn't take this long to get to the good part.

He reached out with one finger, poking her first in the shoulder, and then on the cheek. It wasn't the gentle touch he usually had in her dreams, and it certainly wasn't the joyous hug she'd thought was coming, the one that pressed all the breath from her until she felt light-headed.

"Ow!" she protested, slapping his hand away. He pulled it back, looking at the back of his own hand in confusion.

"It's you!" he said. "I don't know how, and I don't know why, but it's you."

"Right. Now, can I have my hug, so I can wake up in peace?"

"Your hug, what are you...well," he said, grinning madly at her. "If that's all you wanted, you certainly came a long way to get it."

He threw his arms around her and drew her in, feeling solid and just a bit warm against her body. He began to laugh close to her ear, that maniac's laugh he'd always had, the one she'd nearly forgotten the sound of.

"Mmm," she hummed, pulling him even closer and running her hands underneath his suit jacket. "This is even better than usual."

"Rose," he said, pulling his head away from her, but leaving their bodies in intimate contact. "You're not dreaming."

"All right," she said. "Guess you won't mind if I do this, then."

She pushed forward onto her toes, bringing her face close to his, and then she closed the distance and kissed him in the way she'd spent years wishing she'd done when she'd had the chance. He made a strangled sound as she let her hands wander the expanse of his back, enjoying the silky feel of his shirt against her skin.

"Rose!" he gasped, pulling away and holding her at arm's length, taking a few breaths before he continued. "It's not that I don't appreciate the...well...the..." he fumbled, pointing rapidly between the two of them and then making some of the oddest hand gestures Rose had ever seen.

"Listen," she told him. "My alarm's bound to go off any second now. I don't have this dream every night anymore, so I intend to enjoy it when I do."

"Rose!" he barked, in that no-nonsense, business-minded way that he had. "You are in the TARDIS. You're back." He smiled at her in a way that looked painfully real. "I don't know what I have to do to convince you, but I can assure you that this isn't a dream."

Rose shut her eyes, willing herself not to believe it. It all seemed very real, more real than any dream she'd ever had. The disappointment, though, if she were wrong; it would be too much to bear. She felt as though she'd cried every tear she had a right to shed and then some, and she wasn't sure if she could open the wound again.

"Drink it in, Rose Tyler." He pulled completely away from her, clasping her hand in his and leading her to the central console. "Put your hands here and feel it. Nothing feels like that. No dream you could have would feel like this."

Rose did as he asked, reluctantly and with great trepidation. She felt the connection as soon as her hand made contact, as though a part of her had been missing and had now been restored. She looked at him, her eyes wide with wonder.

"I'm back?" she asked.

"You are. And one more thing."

She'd just opened her mouth to ask him what the 'one thing more' was, when she received her hug. Most spectacularly.


	3. Chapter 2

He was still spinning her around, clutched tightly in his arms, when he suddenly and unceremoniously released her.

"Wait," he said, holding up one long finger between their faces. "This has to wait. Someone's missing." He began to pace as Rose tried to wrap her confused thoughts around her new reality.

"Who's missing? Someone from the TARDIS? Did you find Jack?"

"Yes. And no. Yes and no, respectively."

"What?" she said, feeling more confused than ever.

"Yes, she's someone from the TARDIS. And no, it's not Jack."

"She?" Rose asked, feeling irrationally jealous. She'd been gone six years in her timeline, and there was no telling how long she'd been gone from this one. She hadn't wanted him to live out his nearly eternal lifespan alone, traveling the universe in an empty TARDIS. Something about knowing the specifics, though, made her wish she could forget.

"Martha. Martha Jones. We went to the moon. We met Shakespeare. We got separated on New Earth, and then we found some Daleks."

"Daleks? How could they—"

"Doesn't matter," he said, cutting her off and leaving her a bit hurt.

"You took her to New Earth?"

His eyes met hers and he ceased his pacing. Then he looked deliberately away from her. "Just a few trips, to say thanks."

She got the uncomfortable feeling that he was hiding something. His inscrutable exterior dropped easily back into place, making his face unreadable and the subject effectively dropped.

"What happened to her?"

"She disappeared. We were talking, she glowed, and then she was gone."

"She glowed?"

"Yes," he answered, looking thoughtful. "That's the point, isn't it? Not the disappearance. The glow is the key! Oh, yes!" he called triumphantly. "You do always know the right thing to say, just like I told her."

"Glad I could—"

"There's got to be something. Some idea. But where?" He ran to the screen on the main console, which was still hanging a bit off-center as a result of some of his previous incarnation's more frustrated tinkering. "The TARDIS will show some indication of what's happened."

"What about the TARDIS?"

"The glow. Huon particles. I can't believe I hadn't considered it."

"Hu-what?" Rose asked, making her feel absolutely thick in the way that only the Doctor was capable of.

"Huon particles, just like the ones in the heart of the TARDIS. Yours, the ones I couldn't take from you, were activated somehow, bringing you here. I just don't know—" he broke off, jogging through the control room as he made frustrated noises.

"Doctor!" she yelled, trying to follow him and failing horribly in the attempt.

"What does that have to do with Martha?" he said, his hair now an absolute caricature around his head as he ran his hands through it. "I just don't know how it's connected to Martha."

"Wait, Doctor. I'm still not sure what you're on about. What d'you mean, mine were activated somehow?"

"Residual Huon energy that I must not have been able to extract from you, after Satellite Five." She just looked at him, searching her memory for something that would explain what he was telling her. He looked a bit guilty, to be honest. "I never really told you, Rose, how we got out of that."

"It's hazy," she admitted. "You collapsed before I really had a chance to ask you what happened. After that, I suppose, it just didn't seem important."

"You absorbed energy from the TARDIS, Rose, but it was killing you. I had to take it from you, but I must have left some behind. Not enough to kill you, but enough to—" He stopped, and grinned at her. "Enough to bring you back, even through the void. They must have protected you."

"So, I'm back. I'm back for good."

"You are."

She waited for something to happen, for him to kiss her, or dance, or do any of the crazy, wonderful things he used to do, showing off for her. She could see it on his face, the joy that threatened to explode from his very fingertips. It all muted a moment later, as though a veil had passed over them.

"We just have to find out what this has to do with Martha."

"You said she glowed, though. Was she exposed to the Hu...Hu...whatevers, as well?"

"Not that I know of," he said, he told her, looking genuinely puzzled. "But I do know one thing." He smiled madly at her again. "We're just the two to find out."

"Where do we start?" she said, that tingle of excitement passing through her body, a feeling she'd long since given up for dead.

"We'll start with where I was about to take her. It's as good a place as any, and the coordinates are already programmed into the TARDIS. A flat, not too far from Royal Hope Hospital." He ran to the controls, flipping switches with one hand while leaning over to turn a crank with the other.

The time rotor began to move, and the noise, that wonderful noise she thought she'd never hear again, began to ring in her ears. She grabbed for something to steady herself but, just as she used to, she fell on her backside with a graceless bump instead.

It honestly wasn't until that moment, sprawled awkwardly on the ground, that she felt at home again. She smiled, watching as the Doctor continued to dance around the center column, talking to himself as he operated the rather complicated controls.

She got a particularly good look at his bum as he threw himself across a panel, the back of his rather snug new suit jacket riding up. It reminded her painfully of nights she'd spent cursing herself for unfinished business, always wondering what he would have done if she'd ever been more direct.

She'd made promises to herself, promises that felt meaningless and irrelevant at the time, that she wouldn't waste her second chance if she ever got one. The six years she'd spent in a world with zeppelins and a father who hadn't died in a car crash, in a world that wasn't truly hers, had changed her.

She was much more direct now, with a higher opinion of herself and her own abilities. It was something that, even without her A-levels, had landed her a position at that world's Torchwood instead of one in a shop, folding jumpers and directing customers to the loo. Unconsciously or not, she had tried to form herself into the woman the Doctor would have wanted her to be.

In the end, it had taken a bit more effort than that to finish the job. She'd changed her hair and chose new, muted shades of lipstick and eye shadow, all to the constant refrain of "But why d'you want to look so plain, sweetheart?" from her mum. To be a different girl, a different woman, she'd had to change the person who looked back at her in the mirror. It was the last thing she'd needed to do before she felt she could really go on.

She picked herself off the floor and brushed unnecessarily at her night clothes, feeling silly in her fuzzy slippers.

"I just need a moment," she said, trying to get the Doctor's attention as the TARDIS controls slowed to a rest. "If we're off somewhere, I don't think this is the best thing to wear."

He looked at her as though he hadn't really seen her before, laughing a bit. "Oh, I don't know. I accomplished quite a bit in my jim-jams, once."

"Well, I'm not you," she told him, laughing with him. What wasn't funny was the worry that her old clothes wouldn't fit her anymore, either in body or in mind, but there wasn't much to be done about that for the moment.

"Hurry up. No time to waste."

"It's a time machine, or don't you remember?" she teased him, disappearing down the corridor to deal with the clothes her 20 year old self had seen fit to bring aboard.

She searched through the piles of laundry, which she was grateful to find was clean, at least. A wave of nostalgia came over her as it reminded her of some of their close scrapes. A t-shirt bearing a large Union Jack brought a smile to her face, just as an artfully battered red hoodie did.

She finally decided on a fairly conservative outfit, one that she was pleased to note still fit her as though she'd bought it yesterday. After one final look in the mirror, finding a disorienting mixture of the woman she was and the girl she'd once been, she headed back to meet the Doctor, and possibly to meet this Martha Jones.


	4. Chapter 3

The Doctor threw open the door of the TARDIS, but took only a half-step into the flat before he paused.

"That's..." he said, sounding puzzled, "...not right."

Rose peeked over his shoulder, seeing poster after poster of naked or semi-naked women decorating the walls. Perhaps she hadn't had any reason to be jealous of this new companion's relationship with the Doctor, after all.

"She has interesting taste," Rose said. "And you said my mum was a poor decorator."

"This isn't right," he repeated, taking a step back and pulling the door closed again. He went quickly to the controls, frowning at them after a moment. "But it is right. Doesn't make sense."

Rose opened the TARDIS door a second time, finding a gobsmacked-looking young man standing in the hall, holding a beer and wearing only a battered old pair of y-fronts.

"What in the bloody hell are you doing...and what...how is that..." he stammered, wavering a bit on his feet. "Am I on telly?" he asked, as though this was the only acceptable way to explain how a large, blue box had suddenly appeared in his flat's lounge.

Rose couldn't help but laugh, though she felt horrible about surprising the poor man this way.

"Sorry," the Doctor said, leaning over her shoulder and using that 'everything's normal, despite the life-changing things you've just witnessed' voice he had. "Wrong turning. We'll be out of your way in a tick. Go back to your," he continued, furrowing his brow at the man's attire, "well, whatever you were up to."

The door slammed shut once more and he quickly de-materialized the TARDIS. Rose stopped laughing when she saw the grim look on the Doctor's face, suddenly feeling guilty for such a transgression with him in this state.

"Look," she said, and laid a hand gently on his arm. "We'll find her. I know we will. This mystery, you'll work it out. You always do."

"Not always," he said, looking at her with such intentness that she nearly stumbled backward. "I couldn't work out how to get you back."

"But I am back, and that's all that matters. Together, we can figure this out as well."

The storm in his eyes passed and he reached out to touch two fingers to her cheek, trailing them slowly back to her hairline.

"Oh, yes," he said deliberately, in a whisper. "I believe we can do anything."

"Doctor," she answered, leaning her face into his hand. They stayed that way for a long, breathless moment, until he turned her chin upwards again and his mouth was suddenly against hers. He sank his hands into her hair, holding her to him. She took a half step closer, clutching the bottom edge of his jacket in her hands, still a bit too afraid to make a more intimate gesture.

He pulled away for a moment, a terrible moment in which she was sure he was going to take it back, or at least act as though nothing had happened.

"You cut it," he said, simply.

"What?"

"Your hair. It's shorter."

"I never thought you'd notice an ordinary thing like that."

"I notice all sorts of things," he said, forcing her to wonder just what else, exactly, he'd noticed, and if it had met with his approval. "Ordinary, and not so ordinary."

"I needed a change," she stammered. "No more peroxide, no more lacquer."

"You didn't need a change. You needed a change undone." He released her hair and took her head in his hands, kissing her lightly, all over her face. "Hey," he said, his voice low, rumbling into her as he pressed his lips against her skin. "No crying in my TARDIS."

"What?" Her fingertips flew to her cheeks to find they were, in fact, wet with tears. "I didn't even know I was—"

"It's all right now, Rose," he told her, and he began to kiss her again.

His lips were soft and cool against hers, giving way slowly to let her explore his mouth. There was something so unfamiliar about him, a reminder that under his very human-looking exterior, he was the very definition of exotic.

She felt more emboldened as he pressed himself firmly against her, backing her into one of the curving supports. She finally allowed her hands to slip under his jacket, her palms tracing the sharply-defined lines of his back.

She tried resolutely to ignore the nagging feeling in the back of her mind, that opening the TARDIS door to a stranger's flat meant more than just a wrong turning. He felt amazing, a being that seemed to be made of lips and hands and unyielding hardness against her curves, but it was her turn to push him away.

His eyes were still closed and his breathing was shallow as he struggled to recover. She took a moment just to drink him in, to appreciate the man he was. She'd rarely had the opportunity to do more than glance at him, always hoping he wouldn't notice.

"I know," he said. "We have to find out what's happened to Martha." His eyes fluttered open, and before Rose could blink, he'd sprung into action again. "It must have been some sort of energy overflow from you, when you reappeared. I'd hoped she'd been taken to the coordinates I'd already programmed into the TARDIS, but that clearly wasn't the case. Something's gone wrong."

"What about her family? Friends? Someone she's close to? Go a few days forward and we'll check in with them, see if she's contacted them."

She watched him carefully, noting every tic, every slight change in expression. She couldn't shake the feeling that if Martha hadn't been where his instincts had told him she would be, something had gone horribly wrong.

"Right," he said, after a few moments of silence. "Right. Brilliant, Rose. She's bound to have ended up somewhere, maybe just not where the TARDIS intended to drop her. She'll have contacted someone to help her. I'm sure she's fine."

Rose was trying to make sense of what he was saying as he stood thoughtfully, but motionless, behind the controls. Was he suggesting that they assume Martha was fine, and would find her own way home?

"Still, better to make sure," he added, punching codes into the keyboard. "Ah, I've found her mum. Bloody useful thing, British Telecom directories. Just a mo' and we'll be there."

"All right," she agreed, guardedly. Something else was bothering her, a connection her mind either was failing to make, or worse, that it was refusing to make. The more she tried to push the feeling away, the stronger it got.

"Come on, Rose Tyler," he said, but something about his sunny demeanor seemed forced. "Follow my lead."


	5. Chapter 4

"So, that's it?" she asked, staring at the door directly opposite the TARDIS. "How d'you suppose we should—"

The Doctor silenced her with a gesture inside his jacket, quickly producing the bifold containing his slip of psychic paper. He plastered a ridiculously pleasant grin on his face and jogged up the stone stairs, Rose trailing behind him.

They rang the bell and waited, the Doctor bouncing forward on the balls of his feet as his impatience grew more and more apparent. He rang a second time, and they soon heard a loud stomping noise coming from the interior. It was followed by a rather annoyed-sounding woman bellowing at them, something about leaving her bell "bloody well alone" if Rose's hearing was to be trusted.

The door opened with a jerk and they were faced with a quite striking-looking woman, wearing a pronounced scowl on her face.

"I haven't got all bloody day," she said, her eyes blazing.

The Doctor proffered the psychic paper, proclaiming them to be television researchers for BBC2.

"We're out today doing advance work for a new show, looking for examples of the typical British family. May I ask your name, madam?"

"What's it called?" she demanded, looking with eyes narrowed with suspicion between her two unwelcome visitors.

"I'm sorry?" the Doctor said, choking the words though a tiny cough of surprise.

"It's tentatively called 'Here's Looking at You'," Rose supplied, saying the first thing she could think of.

"Could you answer just a few questions for research purposes, and we may contact you later for an on-camera interview?" the Doctor added, his words running together with fake charm, just like a smarmy television presenter.

"All right," the woman ventured, still clearly regarding them as questionable, at best.

"Married?" the Doctor asked.

"Divorced."

"Children?" the Doctor continued.

"Two. Boy and a girl," came the answer, in clipped tones.

"And do they keep in touch with—wait. Two? Not three?"

"Yes," the woman said. "I think I know how many children I have, not that it's really any business of yours."

"What do they do?" the Doctor continued, his voice now much more serious.

"My daughter's in public relations, and my son is—shouldn't you be taking this down, if this is really research for BBC2? Let me see your identification again."

The Doctor flashed the psychic paper a second time, apparently satisfying her immediate suspicions, but she still seemed wary of them.

"I'm sorry for taking so much of your time, madam. I believe we're looking for larger families for the present, but we'll be in touch if that changes," the Doctor told her, walking backward a few steps as he spoke.

"Bloody waste of time," the woman muttered, slamming the door enough to rattle the hinges as the Doctor turned away and walked quickly back to the TARDIS.

When they were inside, Rose waited for the Doctor to say something, but he didn't. He didn't do much of anything, really, other than torture his hair with his long, manic fingers and take in breath as though he was about to speak, only to fail to do so when the moment came.

"What did that mean, Doctor?" she ventured.

"She's gone," he said, his voice small and sad, as though he still didn't quite believe it. "She's been wiped out of time. And it's because she was here, with me."

"But how? Why?"

"It must have had something to do with—" he began, cutting himself off abruptly as his head snapped upward and their eyes met. "No, I'm not certain. I have to think. There's bound to be—"

"You've already said it had something to do with me. You know something else, and you're not telling me," she said, feeling much more like her more impulsive and emotional 19 year old self than the more composed woman she'd fought to become.

"You always could see straight through me," he said, smiling sadly at her for a moment until he suddenly sprang to action. "Come on, then. We'll sit down and I'll tell you what I'm thinking."

Instead of leading her somewhere in the TARDIS, he went back to the controls and entered a new set of coordinates. After a short trip in which she somehow managed to stay on her feet, he led her to the door and out into the sunlight. She laughed as soon as she realized where they were.

"Hungry?" she asked him, looking up at the neon sign that identified this restaurant as one that she and his previous incarnation had found together, after saving Earth from the Slitheen. She'd looked for it once in her new world, actually, only to find that world's version of Marks and Spencer's in its place. That discovery had put her in a foul mood for several days.

"Famished," he answered. "I'll need some energy to work this out, as well."

He chose a table on the patio, far away from any other diners. A waitress took their order not long after they'd sat down, and it was only then that he began to speak.

"There's a balance in the universe, Rose. Across them, as well. This world and the one you've just come from are closely connected, but they're still separate."

"I know," she told him, remembering exactly how separate they were and how trapped she'd felt.

"Any transfer from one universe to another requires something in return. Energy transfer, mass transfer. It's Newton's Third Law, but in a way he could never have imagined it. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."

"Are you saying I've put my mum's world in danger?" she said, suddenly worried about the friends and family she'd left behind.

"No," he said, decisively. "Pete, Mickey, your mum, everyone there, they're all fine. I'm certain of that. One person making the trip wouldn't require a reaction large enough to cause significant damage to that world. It would be very small; so small that it would be difficult to tell the difference in either world."

"About the size of one human being?" she asked, suddenly understanding what the Doctor was trying to tell her. "You're saying that when I was pulled back to the TARDIS, something happened to—" she stopped suddenly, unable to finish the thought aloud. "I killed her."

"No," he told her again. "You must have transferred the energy from the Huon particles to her after you were pulled through the Void and back to the TARDIS. She was the closest organism to your physical makeup. The easiest way for the universes to balance the scales."

"But Mickey, my dad, all of us...we all went back and forth without anything happening."

"But there were consequences. Don't you remember the state your dad's world was in? The global warming? That was all due to the breaches, to the bodies and energy passing through them. It was why we needed to close them."

"But I didn't come through a breach this time."

"Doesn't matter. You, Rose, are many things, but on one level, you are a bundle of matter and energy. The world you came from merely re-balanced itself."

"So she's stranded there. Alone. She doesn't know what's happened or why she's there, and no one here remembers she even existed."

"Yes," he answered, and he shut his eyes for a moment.

"I'm so sorry," Rose said, though she didn't know what she was apologizing for, exactly.

"It's not your fault," he reassured her, but it didn't make her feel better at all.

"Doesn't matter. It still happened."

"We'll fix this. We'll find a way," he told her, his eyes wide open and earnest as they drilled into her.

"How will you fix it?"

"One breach," he said, holding up an insistent finger. "We'll open one, just one, and we'll pull her through. If there's a breach open, the energy can flow back more freely, and there'll be no more people disappearing from my TARDIS."

"How do we open it?"

"I'm not sure," he said, looking extremely thoughtful. "Yet," he added, making it clear that he had no intention of failing.

"What about all the horrible things you said would happen if we left them open before? Everything fracturing and collapsing, you said."

"Just one very small breach, opened for a short period of time, would be low risk."

"But how do we close it?"

"If I can open it, I'll be able to close it. It may even repair itself, as the others did after we closed the largest breach in Torchwood Tower." He took her hand under the table. "So, there's my plan, and it's a brilliant one, if I say so myself. To start, we have to locate a power source. The rest, we'll take from there."

"So, we should go, yeah? Let's start—"

"I'm already considering a few options, Rose. We can talk while I do that."

"And have chips, for old times' sake?" she said, winking at him.

The food arrived just then, but it sat in front of them untouched as the Doctor practically interrogated her about the life she'd led in her new world. He wanted to know about each race she'd encountered working at Torchwood, leeching the tiniest of details from her until she was nearly exhausted.

"So, Mickey's fine, then. And you're fine. The two of you, just fine?" he asked, the question coming out of the blue, close on the heels of a long discussion about the Foamasi and a narrowly-averted nuclear war.

"We were. Are. Yeah," she stammered, confused at the sudden change of subject.

"The two of you. Just fine. That's fine, then." He suddenly picked up his fork and poked it into his food, examining it closely for a moment before biting into it. He pulled a face and put the fork down.

"Mickey's married, in fact," she added, finally understanding what he was really asking her. "But not to me, of course."

"Of course," he repeated, a smile slowly taking over his face.

"Doctor?" she asked, just as the information from their earlier conversation finally clicked into place in her mind. "If you thought there was a way to open a small breach and pull someone through, why haven't you—"

"What makes you think I haven't been preparing to do it?" he answered, before she had a chance to finish her question. They stared at each other for a long moment, the mood becoming more and more serious until it threatened to suffocate them both.

"Let's go back to the TARDIS," she suggested, knowing exactly what she meant by that, but wondering if the Doctor was too thick to understand.

He pushed his chair back from the table and stood without a word, throwing some money onto the table from an inner pocket of his suit jacket. He walked behind her chair and helped her up, putting his chin on her shoulder and enclosing her hand in his.

"Run," he whispered, so close to her that she felt his breath on her earlobe. His grip tightened on her hand as he jerked her away, both of them running at top speed and sending their laughter into the night.


	6. Chapter 5

The TARDIS doors slammed shut behind them, the noise harsh and abrupt. A moment later, her hands were on his shoulders and she pushed him back, their faces close as they breathed hard, both of them trying to recover from their sprint.

She stopped just short of letting their bodies touch. She could feel their clothes brushing against each other, but she wouldn't allow any closer contact just yet. He tried to press forward, straining against her hands, but she pushed back and he relented. She knew he could move if he wanted to, but he seemed to be letting her take the lead.

She stretched forward and bumped her nose against his, moving slowly to nuzzle his cheek. His mouth found her neck as her movements bared it to him. He nipped gently at her, pressing his lips to her skin for long moments as her hands tightened, grabbing handfuls of his coat. His tongue flicked out for a brief moment and he groaned deep in his throat.

"Rose," he whispered, his breath tickling her over-sensitized skin, "can I do that again?"

She pulled back in confusion. "Yes, of course you can."

"I'm not sure you understand. One taste, Rose, and I know more about you than you can imagine. It's an intrusion. You should understand that before you—"

"I don't have anything to hide from you."

He fixed her with a long, insistent stare, his breaths coming slower and deeper. Rose was about to beg him to touch her, to kiss her, to do something, but she couldn't decide on the words. It was then that he began to move, deliberately enough that she trembled in anticipation.

He gently pushed her head to the side, cradling her cheek in his hand as his mouth swept downward to her throat. The kisses were slow, but relentless. His lips brushed her skin first, followed by his tongue pressing gently against her skin, only to move to another area to explore and learn. It was slow and rhythmic, and it lulled her into matching his tempo, moving her body against his.

"Rose," he said, his voice low and dangerous. His free hand slid under her shirt, his palm resting just below her bra. "You're blinding me."

"I need you, Doctor," she told him, her throat scratchy, as though the words were being ripped from her. "Please," she begged, pulling uselessly and inelegantly at his clothes.

"Not here," he told her, and she immediately shook her head against him.

"Yes," she argued, only to moan in protest when he pushed her back.

He answered with a hard, relentless kiss. She might have considered it violent if she hadn't been pushing back against him just as hard. His arms came under hers, twining around her body, urging her to move.

She fought him, her impatience screaming within her that there was no more time to waste. Why should they move when they were together, and that was all they'd ever really needed?

He didn't seem to agree, urging her on even as they bumped into walls and their feet tangled together. Each of their stumbles only meant they had to cling even closer to each other, lips and tongues and hands searching to maintain contact.

She soon learned he had been steering them to her room, the oddly preserved relic that it had become in her absence. When they were safely inside and he'd turned the tables by pressing her into the wall near the door, his arm flicked out and they were bathed in a warm, gentle light.

He looked questioningly at her, as though he anticipated a protest from her.

"I want to see you, too," she whispered, running her hands slowly down his chest. He watched every inch of their descent, then responded by taking off his coat and letting it pool behind him on the floor. She reversed the path her hands had taken, lost in the feel of his body until his hands covered hers.

"Can I—?" he said, the two words making no sense on their own, but Rose knew what he wanted from her. He released her hands and she twisted the bottom edge of her shirt in her fingers, pulling it up and over her head. She removed the rest of her clothes as smoothly as she could, moving slowly as he openly gazed at her body. She didn't want him to see how she was shaking, afraid it would make him think that she had doubts.

He rewarded her courage by running his fingertips lightly over her shoulders, dipping back to trace the curves of her back with his hands. His touch, light and maddening, made her shiver. Her muscles twitched as he explored her shoulders, first with his hands, but soon, with his mouth.

She pushed him back a step, then tugged inarticulately at his tie, willing him to understand. A hint of a smile passed over his eyes as he undid the knot, slipping it slowly from his collar and then handing it to her like a trophy.

His shoes were next, so utterly inappropriate for the formality of the suit, but so completely him that she smiled behind one hand as she helped him kick them off. His suit disappeared a piece at a time, and then his pale skin was glowing in the dim light.

She brought her hand tentatively forward to trace the lines of his chest. He bore a moment of her exploration before it must have been too much, when his head dropped back, allowing her to stare at the long, strong length of his neck.

She kissed him there, just as he'd kissed her. They came together, her warm body against his deliciously cool skin, reminding her of all the differences between them that no longer seemed to matter.

"Rose, are you nervous?" he asked, his voice quiet and intimate.

She pulled away just long enough to answer. "A bit," she admitted, not wanting him to give him an excuse to take it all back.

"I'm terrified," he told her, almost joking, but she could hear the seriousness behind it.

She stepped back toward the bed and held out her hand to him. He took it and she pulled him back to the bed, sitting down as soon as she felt the backs of her legs against the duvet. She shimmied back, wondering if she looked ridiculous. If the look on his face was any indication, she didn't.

"I've seen a lot of things, Rose. Terrible things, and wonderful things. I've seen nearly every notable event in the history of the universe at least once, but nothing as breathtaking as you, lying there."

"Doctor, can you remind me of something?" she asked, and he nodded, a glazed look in his widened eyes as she arched her back. "Did I ever tell you that you talk too much?"

He smiled a little, walking closer to her so he could run his fingertips from her ankle to her knee. "I think you might have mentioned that before."

She was about to pull him down to lie on the bed with her, but he knelt at the foot of the bed before she could. He leaned over and kissed her knee, urging her to move so he could explore the hollow behind it. The pressure, the tension built, beginning as a tightening in her stomach. She wanted more.

"Patience, Rose," he whispered. "I want to know you, every part of you." His hands ran possessively down her calves, his palms kneading and caressing her as they moved.

"I need you," she answered, pressing her head back into the pillow in frustration. She didn't know how she could possibly survive whatever he had planned.

"Perhaps I could move things along a bit," he said, and he was suddenly over her, planting open-mouthed kisses over her belly. He slid downward, his hands brushing lightly over her thighs and urging them open.

She fought a moment of panic, feeling silly for wanting to hide anything from him when just a second before, she'd been so impatient. She took a deep breath and relaxed, but then she noticed that he was hovering over her, motionless.

"Doctor?"

"I didn't know if—"

"I'm all right," she told him, gently threading her hands through his hair to reassure him.

"I thought you might not be ready."

"I am. I need you."

He parted her legs, and this time, she pushed her reservations resolutely away. He kissed the inside of her thighs first, her skin feeling almost painfully sensitive as he teased it with his lips and his tongue. He moved, sometimes closer to where she longed him to go, sometimes further away.

His hand moved to cover her, applying the gentlest pressure she could imagine. It was a gesture without even the merest suggestion of invasion. It was a request, an expression of what he longed to do, where he needed to be.

Her hips strained toward the ceiling, against the pressure of his hand. His intake of breath was sharp and long, his jaw flexing as his hand began to push against her in long pulses. She struggled to keep her eyes open through the exquisite torture of him giving her something so close to what she needed, but staying far enough away to drive her to the point of incoherence.

She concentrated what conscious thought she had left into what she wanted him to do, but he seemed to be completely unaware of her impatience. Long moments after she'd been sure she couldn't wait any longer, his hand finally moved again, baring her to him. She could feel the coolness of his skin against her almost uncomfortable warmth, one finger slipping gently inside her as another settled just above.

Her eyes clamped shut and she bit down on her lower lip, afraid that her reaction would seem silly to him.

"I want to hear you, Rose. I don't want you to hold back."

She opened her eyes and raised herself on her elbows enough to look at him again. The look in his eyes was familiar, as though all the strength and determination he had was focused on one point. She'd just never seen it directed entirely at her before.

The connection between them had been forged, solidified into something tangible that neither of them could break now. She relaxed and tried to forget about any reflex to stay quiet, to fear sounding ridiculous. It was difficult at first, becoming easier as each moan she rewarded him with made his eyes flare.

Just as she was about to beg him, forgetting any trace of the shame she'd had to shake free of, to end her torment and join their bodies together, his head dipped downward to replace his hand. The change was met with a quite fluent string of expletives from her, which she nearly regretted until she felt him smile against her.

His tongue flattened and teased, dipping inside her for a moment, then swirling around the tortured skin above. Her hands flew to his head, twisting insistently in his hair. She realized she could be hurting him and tried to relax her hands, only to be met with a sound of protest from the Doctor, who apparently enjoyed the evidence of her need for him.

She felt torn in half, thinking she would die if he stopped, but knowing she couldn't wait much longer to feel him filling her, to know the weight of his body over hers. When she thought she might have actually already gone mad, she tugged on his arms to pull him upward.

He paused, making one more long, flat, upward stroke of his tongue before he complied, whispering something about never being able to deny her anything as he settled over her. She pressed her body up and against his, but he paused, brushing his hand against her cheek and looking troubled.

"Rose, that day, on the beach—"

"Don't," she begged, barely able to squeeze the word out between long, hard breaths.

"I have to. What you told me, just before the link was br—"

She covered his mouth with her hand. "No, Doctor. Don't say it. I know. I always knew. You don't have to say the words. I don't want you to. I just want you to know that I know."

They stared at each other in silence, the Doctor brushing her hair away from her eyes as she stroked his cheek. She could feel him so close to her that it would be a matter of the smallest of movements for them to join together.

The moment came, each of them recognizing it without words. He stretched and filled her slowly, coming to a rest only when he'd buried himself completely inside her.

"I always knew," she repeated, only understanding now how much the untimely ending of their last contact on that beach in Norway had injured him. Her words now seemed to strengthen him, to relieve him of that horrible burden.

She kissed him, more to complete the repair of his wound than in passion. As their lips connected, he began to move inside her. One retreat created the anticipation for the next thrust into her, his pace and force building each time.

The feeling that had begun long ago as a tension, a pressure in the center of her body, grew as she moved with him. He whispered her name into her ear, over and over until the sounds lost their definition. Only the deep, breathy timbre of his voice held any meaning for her.

His hand snaked between their bodies, teasing her as he had before. It was more than she could take and she arched against him, the tension in her finally giving way as she called out to him. He answered with his own release, continuing his thrusts until the waves of pleasure that washed over her were done.

"I always knew," she repeated.

"Shh," he told her, laying his head next to hers. "Just sleep for now, Rose."

She fought it, though she knew it was useless. "We need to start...got to find Martha..."

"We will, very soon. I'll have to leave you for a moment to take the first step, but I'll wait until you're asleep."

She wanted to know what he was thinking, why he needed to leave, and so many other things that she had trouble keeping all the questions separate in her mind. It was a losing battle. Her next question died on her lips as she slipped into slumber, her head cradled in his elbow.


	7. Chapter 6

Rose opened her eyes, realizing she'd been swatting her own shoulder as she slept, but she wasn't sure why. She tried to shake off her drowsiness, starting with a full-body stretch that reminded her exactly why she was so tired.

There was another body tucked in just behind hers, a very male body, and he was currently brushing the tips of his fingers along her shoulder in a particularly annoying fashion.

"Shove off," Rose said, smacking his hand a little harder.

"Come on, Rose. I need you to wake up."

"Wake me up properly, then," she said, twisting around so that she was facing him. "Tickling me is only going to—"

He kissed her, stealing the end of her sentence, but it didn't feel like much of a tragedy if this is what she got in return. His hands cupped the back of her head, his mouth covering hers with long, deep, lingering kisses that made her very thankful to be awake.

It was then that she realized her palm was resting against his thigh in their new configuration. His leg felt long and lean, just as she'd always imagined, but this reminded her that she hadn't had much of a chance to explore his body the way he'd learned hers the night before.

She splayed her fingers and brought her hand up, pausing for a moment at his hip before she trailed one finger up his chest and then slowly back to his waist. She'd never before experienced the feeling of power he gave her when he hissed in a breath and shut his eyes, his head falling back in a gesture of complete surrender.

"Seems you're mine to do with as I choose," she told him, kissing slowly down his shoulder as her hands continued to explore the long, sinewy lines of his body.

"Oh, yes. For as long as you'd like."

Rose stopped, the haziness of sleep finally lifting as she remembered what they'd discussed the night before. "Doctor, we can't hang about here. We must have a million things to do. Is that why you were waking me up?"

"Wait," he said, blinking a little at her and taking a deep breath before he continued. "We are already doing something. Well, the TARDIS is doing something."

She frowned at him a bit in confusion. "What d'you mean?"

"Same method I used when we had our goodbye on the beach. I scanned for a large source of energy, found a safe spot to put the TARDIS, and she's slowly soaking up the power we'll need. It'll take longer to store it this far out, but it's the safest way."

"So, we've got hours, then?" she asked, biting her bottom lip with feigned shyness.

"About a day. Maybe a touch more," he told her. "Though, I don't know if I can recapture the mood I was in before you—"

She interrupted him with a kiss the same way he'd done with her, but she added something else of her own. Her hands wandered down his hips, then along his stomach, until her fingers closed around him. Her touch was light and curious, tracing and memorizing every last detail about him as she kept his mouth too busy, for once, to babble.

"Rose, I think we'll need to have a talk about subtlety," he said after breaking their kiss, speaking between sharp, panting breaths.

"Do you?" she asked, taking her hands away and stifling a giggle when he choked, reacting to the loss.

"No," he admitted. "I think you're perfectly fine as you are."

She pushed him onto his back, straddling his thighs and continuing to torture him with her hands. "Just fine, then?"

"Ah, that's not exactly true," he said. "You're perfectly brilliant as you are."

"Is that so?"

"Shall I tell you, then?" he said, abruptly sitting up, and she nearly fell backward onto the bed in her surprise. She had to tear her hands away from the long, pulsing strokes she'd been trying to distract him with to wrap herself around him, a desperate attempt to stay upright. She found herself even with his now very serious face, giving her that piercing, intense look of his.

"You could," she said, trying, but failing, to keep her eyes locked on his as he slid inside her, pulling down on her shoulders to go as deep as he possibly could.

"Well, we'll start with your compassion." He paused to urge her to move against him, sighing as she pulled away and then resting his forehead against hers when she pressed downward again. "You can empathize with anyone who is even remotely due the honor, Rose. You reminded me to really see. To be merciful."

"Doctor—"

"I'm not done, Rose. Not even close," he said, kissing her as she moved over him. "You're brave. Not because you don't understand or care about the danger, because you're bound and determined to do the right thing."

"Am I doing the right thing now?" she asked, swirling her hips against him.

"And you're headstrong. Always gave me as good as you got, no matter what," he told her, apparently drawing his inspiration from the moment at hand.

She moved faster, deciding to take it as a challenge, to see if she could distract him from his litany.

"No matter where we went, your wonder, your love of the adventure, the journey...it was more interesting for me to watch you than whatever I'd brought you there to see."

"I loved every minute we had together," she told him, working hard to find the composure to speak after seeing the heartbreakingly sincere look in his eyes as they burned into her. "No matter what."

"You're you, Rose, with everything that means. With the faith you put in me, your kindness, your joy."

She wasn't sure what was affecting her more, his words, or the feel of him inside her as she began to move with more urgency, driving harder and harder against him.

"You're my strength, Rose. You were even after you were gone," he whispered, clinging to her.

She wanted so much to answer him, tell him what he meant to her, but she couldn't. He had completely overwhelmed her. It seemed like he was everything, that his voice and his body and his mind were all that mattered. He was all she'd ever wanted, adventure and joy and need all wrapped up into the uniqueness that was the Doctor, and he'd finally, truly let her in.

"Rose," he whispered, and she could hear in his voice what she meant to him.

"Doctor," she answered, pressing hard against him and twisting her hips. She finally found the right pressure, the right angle, and she cried out with the absolute perfect torture of it. The noise was harsh against the memory of his low, even voice as he'd seduced her with his words, but he followed with a deep, almost painful-sounding moan of his own.

She collapsed against him, too rested from sleep to be drowsy, but utterly spent, emotionally and physically. He gathered her up and helped her shift until they were lying on their sides, face to face. Her hand rested on his neck, and his, lightly against her cheek. There were no more words, just the two of them together.


	8. Chapter 7

They'd spent the rest of the day talking and reminiscing, arguing about one detail of their adventures or another and kissing until Rose felt a gentle swelling in her lips. Well, and doing a bit more than kissing, if the truth was to be told, but there were limits even to a Time Lord's physiology, it seemed.

She'd fought to stay awake until he convinced her to give in, humming a tuneless song in her ear until she drifted off. When she woke hours later, she could feel that he was gone from the bed even before she patted the area next to her to find it empty.

"Hello again," he said, and she sat up to find him sitting at the desk. He'd shoved her abandoned books and things to the side and covered the rest of its surface with papers. He was wearing only his glasses and the trousers from his suit, and was quite possibly the sexiest thing she'd ever seen.

"Are you working on—"

"Yes," he said quickly, setting his pen down and turning around in the chair. "Coming along fine, so far." He sounded very confident, but there was something under the surface that Rose couldn't quite put her finger on.

"Don't you need the TARDIS for this? Or isn't there at least a place where you'd have more room?" she asked, hoping that whatever oddness she'd sensed from him was just from being stuck at her tiny desk, separated from the tools he really needed.

"I didn't want to leave you."

She let his admission hang in the air between them, unanswered. She simply couldn't think of anything to say that felt like a worthy response. He'd stayed at her cramped desk, scribbling on papers in the dark, simply because that was where she was.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, looking for a subtle way to relocate him to a more sensible place to do his work.

"Kicking me out, Rose?" he teased.

"Kicking us both out," she retorted. "We have work to do, you know. There's got to be a better place for you than here, at that dodgy old desk."

He acquiesced, standing and gathering his papers, joking with her about her lack of hospitality. She threw off the sheet and shivered as the cool air hit her naked body. Her fluffy pink robe was, thankfully, just where she'd stashed it long ago, in the back of the wardrobe. She was just pulling it around herself when she realized he'd stopped talking, and she turned to find him watching her very closely.

"Rose," he began dangerously, "if you want us to get to business, you've picked a rather distracting way to begin." He left the papers behind and came to her, slipping his hands inside the robe as he bent to kiss her neck.

With great reluctance, she pushed him back, feeling horrible about the 'wounded puppy' look he treated her to.

"You have work to do, Doctor."

"I've been doing it," he protested. "I can do a lot of things at the same time."

"Then I suppose you can do that one thing very quickly if I leave you to it," she insisted. "I'll go make us something. It's not the end of the world."

"No," he said, too abruptly. "Not the end of the world at all." He cupped her chin and gave her a slow, searching kiss before he let her go.

She was still trying to figure out if he was hiding something from her as she padded through the corridors, relishing the nearly-unpleasant coolness of the metallic TARDIS floors against her bare feet.

"I missed you too," she whispered to the ship, trailing a hand down the wall as she walked. "I still had my key."

She rummaged through the cupboards when she arrived in the kitchen, looking with disgust on some of the things she found, and with exasperation at the rest. That is, until she found a pristine, boldly yellow bunch of bananas, after which she had to sit down and have a good, long laugh.

When she'd recovered, she twisted two bananas free of the bunch and laid them aside, putting the rest back. After a bit more searching, she found a few things she was familiar enough with to consider them edible. She was just trying to figure out how to balance it all in her arms when she caught herself just staring at the counter, her mind wandering to other things.

Something about everything that was happening, that the Doctor was trying to make happen, was still bothering her. She honestly couldn't put words to it, but it was driving her mad regardless. The Doctor seemed confident, but he'd had moments of letting that appearance drop, as well.

Not to mention, he'd been working on this all along. He said he'd been trying to open a single breach to bring her back, but hadn't managed to do it. Yet, he seemed so sure that they could accomplish it now. She didn't understand why it didn't all add up.

She piled the food she'd dug up on her folded arms and set off, taking a deep breath to steel her against whatever it was that the Doctor had left out of what he'd told her. She realized she was walking slowly, subconsciously dawdling, and she intentionally sped up her pace. If there was something he was choosing to hide from her, she needed to know what it was.

She found him bent over a display, his scrawled-on papers sitting nearby and his hair noticeably more rumpled. He didn't appear to notice her at first, muttering something to the screen as he scratched the back of his neck.

She leaned against the railing nearby, trying not to disturb him, but the amount of time she was able to balance the food she'd brought had evidently come to an end as one of the bananas fell to the floor.

His head snapped up and he looked down at the banana, then up at her. A slow grin took over his face.

"Shame to bruise a banana, you know. Lots of lovely potassium in there."

She smiled back at him in spite of herself. She'd meant to be very serious with him now that she'd had some time to think, but it was very difficult to do when this overwhelming feeling of relief at being back with him was still so new.

"I'm sure it's fine. I'll have that one," she told him, but he plucked it from the floor, peeled it, and began to eat. She paused, waiting to see if he would fill her in on what he'd been doing, but several moments of silence seemed to indicate he had no intention of doing so. "Doctor," she began, not quite knowing where to start, but finally deciding to just jump in. "I know you've been working on this for awhile, but I don't understand how you happen to be so close to making it work now, just when we need to use what you've worked out to bring Martha back."

"Clever girl," the Doctor answered. "Knew that wouldn't hold you for long."

"So...what then? You really aren't that close? Can you do it at all?"

"I didn't lie to you, Rose. I do think I can do it." He seemed as though he wanted to say something more, but was stopping himself. His lips were crushed together and he kept looking away from her.

"Why didn't you do it, then? Bring me back before now?"

"Rose, it's—I wasn't sure. Not sure enough. There was danger. There always is, with something like this. I didn't have all the details, and the details I did have, well, they don't make this a certain thing. Something could go wrong. Something could still go wrong."

"But Martha—"

"Martha would rather I try it than leave her in a world where she's alone. She's got no one. She might not even remember who she is. Worse, there may well already be a Martha Jones there. She'll fall through the cracks in that world, one way or another. That's not what happened to you. You had your family. Mickey the idiot," the Doctor added, finally injecting a bit of levity into the conversation.

"But not you."

"No, but I couldn't ask you what you wanted, either. I might have been able to scoop you out, draw you back here, without getting you killed. I had no way of knowing how much time had passed for you. The universes move at their own rates. You could have moved on, been married, had children of your own. I might have ripped you away from that without your permission. I—I couldn't take the chance, no matter how much I—"

"How could you not know?" she asked.

He looked at the floor, the walls, anywhere but at her.

"I have a terrible feeling about this, Doctor," she said, unable to stop herself.

"I can't promise that something won't go wrong," he said, earnestly looking at her. "I can't lie to you, Rose. I can only tell you that Martha would want us to try."

"What are the chances that everything comes off all right?" she asked, feeling some strange responsibility to ask the questions Martha couldn't ask for herself.

"They're good," the Doctor began, speaking more slowly now, and she guessed that he was trying to simplify things for her, an obvious necessity when he was the only being in the universe capable of understanding what they were setting out to do. "It's not certain. The only thing that would be certain, of course, is—" he continued, stopping himself and stammering a bit, as though he'd begun to say something he meant to leave out.

"Is what? What's the only way you know it would work, Doctor?"

"It's nothing. I have a different plan where there's an excellent chance of—"

"What are you not telling me?" she demanded, her stomach twisting with apprehension. When he said it, just moments after she'd insisted, she realized she'd known all along.

"I could switch you back. An exchange. That's the only guarantee we've got."


	9. Chapter 8

"Do it," she told him, utterly unable to believe she was saying it, but looking defiantly at him nonetheless. "Send me back."

"We don't have to, Rose."

"I don't want to take any chances with someone else's life," she insisted. "She's in enough trouble as it is, due to me."

"Not due to you. Due to chance. Due to a build-up of Huon particles." He walked to her and grasped her forearms, forcing her to look directly at him. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. We don't have to choose. We can still try to open the breach and pull her back. It'll work, Rose. It has to."

"Don't tell me that. Not if you think there's even a chance it won't. I want to know. I want to understand what could happen."

The Doctor looked terribly sober again, taking several breaths before he led her over to a chair and urged her to sit down. On shaking legs, she lowered herself to the chair, grasping the seat with her fingers for support.

"You're right. You deserve to know everything," he told her, crouching down in front of her to keep their faces even.

"Tell me."

"Mind you, we'll be laughing about this in a day or so, when the three of us are all here and we're telling Martha what happened."

"Right, but just in case, tell me what could go wrong. What would happen if you had to switch us back?"

"If anything goes wrong with the breach once I've got it open, an energy spike, if it threatens to close too soon, I'll have to initiate a simple reversal. It won't hurt. You won't feel a thing."

She laughed, but only because she was trying valiantly not to cry. "No, I won't feel a thing. I'll be ripped away from you again, but I won't feel a thing."

He looked down, clearing his throat and sounding dangerously close to tears, himself. "You won't, Rose. You won't remember this. The switch will take you both to the moment the Huon particles activated and brought you here. You'll both go on as though nothing happened."

He pulled her into his arms as soon as he finished speaking, just as she realized that the worst thing she thought could possibly happen had become even more horrible.

"I won't remember?" she asked, choking the words through the tears she couldn't hold back any longer.

"You won't remember, because this will never have happened."

She cried harder, pulling him closer and grasping handfuls of his jacket in her fists. She might have to give the last two days of her life back, obliterating even the memory of being with him this one last time.

"I'm sorry, Rose. I'm so sorry," he told her, stroking her hair and gently rocking her back and forth.

"Will you remember?"

"Rose, there's no guarantee that we'll have to—"

"If you do have to, will you remember?"

"Yes," he said, whispering the word directly into her ear. She could hear the pain in his voice, and she realized that he would be the one to suffer the most if anything went wrong. She tried to stop crying, to calm herself down, if only as a show of strength and confidence in the Doctor's plan.

"I'm sorry," she said, pulling back and cupping his face in her hand. He shut his eyes, taking just a moment's silence, but then it was suddenly as though someone had flipped a switch to change his mood.

He pulled away from her abruptly, all bravado and action as his voice rang out in long, complex sentences he must have known she couldn't understand. Perhaps he thought all of this technical babble would reassure her, but it just washed over her, leaving her lingering doubts firmly in place.

The longer she watched him, the faster he talked, occasionally stopping to peer at a screen or behind a panel. She couldn't deny how hard he was working, both on the plan he'd set before them and in convincing her that it would work. She wasn't sure what to think, but if there was one person in all of her life who deserved the strength it would take her to hope, it was the Doctor.

She actually managed a smile when he paused to look at her again, sonic screwdriver aimed at the guts of the TARDIS as he was holding the panel open with his knee, just barely balancing on the other leg. He smiled back, and just for a second, she could believe that everything would be fine.

She walked to him, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder first, to steady him, then put the other on the panel he was holding open with his leg.

"I can help, you know. I can keep you from falling on your arse, anyway."

He looked a touch offended. "I'll have you know, Rose Tyler, that I could have balanced like that for hours if I had to."

"But you don't have to. You've got me."

"I do, indeed. Don't I?" he said, shutting off the screwdriver and turning to face her. He kissed her, a gentle, quick kiss of the kind she'd never imagined getting from him. She tried not to think about losing everything they'd built in this tiny handful of hours, concentrating on following his long, complicated instructions instead.

They worked for a bit until she excused herself to put on some proper clothes, then continued through the rest of the day and into the night, though time in the TARDIS was always difficult for Rose to keep track of. She began to feel the tension in her shoulders first, then in her back. After more time passed she found herself shifting her weight from side to side, realizing her legs had begun to ache as well.

"You're tired," the Doctor said, breaking the long silence that had been punctuated only with the buzzing and clatter of his work. "You should rest. I've nearly completed the adjustments we have to make. I can manage the rest on my own."

"I'm not going without you," she said. "If you're nearly done, I should be able to make it."

"I'll be there soon," he argued, turning her around by the shoulders and facing her toward the doorway leading back to her room. "Get some rest."

"Wake me when you come in," she told him, trying to make clear from the tone of her voice that it wasn't a question.

"Rose, tomorrow will be—"

"Wake me," she repeated, not wanting to hear or even think about the next day.

"All right," he said, planting a soft kiss on her cheek before letting her go.

She shuffled away, her legs stiff and her body aching with each step. She hoped what they'd done would be enough, though the fact that she'd never know the difference if something went wrong didn't comfort her at all.

She got undressed, stumbling a bit as she took off her jeans, then getting a button from her jumper caught in her hair as she pulled it over her head. She hadn't realized exactly how exhausted she'd become, but she'd clearly moved well past clumsy and into ungainly in her fatigue.

She climbed into bed, but found it impossible to drop off to sleep. Images of the two of them together, scattered words, and the whirring of the sonic screwdriver all kept mixing in her mind to keep her awake. She just couldn't quite forget that somewhere within the TARDIS, the Doctor was still working to keep her here.

When she heard him enter the room, she wasn't sure how much time had passed. She didn't know if she'd managed to sleep at all, if her dreams had been as fevered and confused as her wakefulness and she'd simply lost the ability to tell the difference.

She heard the rustling of his clothes and then felt the bed dip beneath them. He slipped under the covers with her and molded himself to her back, his arm curling around her waist and holding them together.

"Doctor, is it all right?" she asked, wanting to hear that he'd done it, that he was confident that everything would go well for them.

"Don't worry about that," he answered. "Just sleep."

She wanted so much to fight with him, but she didn't have the energy. The feel of him there with her was enough for her now, just being held by him without any of the excuses they'd used to keep their distance from each other before.

"Tomorrow," she said, fighting to get the word out. "I can't take this waiting. Let's do it tomorrow."

His arm tightened around her waist.

"All right," he whispered, after waiting too long to answer.

She finally gave in, letting the darkness take her. Tomorrow would come and she would have her answer.


	10. Chapter 9

The night and the next morning were a blur to Rose. When she'd woken, he was already awake. She wondered if he'd slept at all, after looking at his drawn, serious face. They'd kissed for what seemed like only minutes but was most likely hours, neither of them saying a word.

They'd made love just as silently, the Doctor gently brushing his fingers down her cheeks as though he was trying to memorize her. It was wonderful and awful at the same time, as every pretense fell away between them and she could sense how worried he was that they would lose each other again.

She was the first to suggest that they get up, her very human impatience demanding that they confront whatever was destined to happen, if only to end the torture of wondering about it. They'd walked hand-in-hand through the corridors until they reached the control room, where he gestured to a seat for her to take and then quietly took to the controls.

The TARDIS began to move and Rose couldn't remember feeling so sick before in her entire life. He took them to what he called "a suitable site", a spot between two planets that had weakened when the main breach between universes had swelled and threatened to break, just before she and the Doctor had managed to close it on the day that ripped her away from him.

Horrible noises of shuddering metal filled the room as the TARDIS seemed to be resisting the entire process, but the Doctor yelled something over the din about some kind of gravity well they were fighting against.

"Makes this the perfect place to do this, but it's rather difficult—" he said, breaking off in the middle of the sentence to run to the other side of the central console and turn a crank. Sparks erupted from an open panel to his right, driving him backward and nearly knocking him down before he lurched forward again, clutching a lever to maintain his balance.

With his free hand, he operated more of the enigmatic controls of his ship, fighting to continue through the jerks and twists that threatened to throw him back again. Rose wondered if she should try to help, but after he made a few more adjustments, everything suddenly settled down to an equilibrium that felt almost disorienting in contrast to the chaos that had come before.

"As I was saying," the Doctor said, his smirk the only clue that he was acknowledging the mess he'd piloted them out of, "the gravity well makes this the ideal spot to open the breach, but it's rather difficult to get us close enough to do it."

"Are you ready?" she asked, watching his expression change to a sober seriousness in an instant.

"Yes," he said, looking as though he'd like to say more, but she was terrified at what would come next if she encouraged him to do it. If he did what she thought he wanted to do, finishing the sentence he'd begun on that beach in Norway, she'd never be able to go through with this.

He thumbed a dial on the screwdriver and pointed it inside an open panel. The time rotor began to move and its distinctive sound filled the room, louder than she'd ever heard it before. His eyes were set on the monitor, its bluish light casting a ghostly glow over his face.

"It's opening!" he called out, just as the TARDIS began to shake again. "It's fine. We'll feel a bit of the effects, but it looks stable."

"Can you find her?" Rose shouted, trying to be heard over the deafening din filling the control room.

"I'm looking," he answered, his free hand moving quickly over the controls, punching buttons and twisting dials. "I can't get a clear reading. I keep losing it."

"Let me help," she said, rushing over to him and stumbling as the ship lurched underneath her. He caught her by the hand and pulled her up.

"Push that and hold it down," he yelled, pointing at an orange button that was just out of his reach. "Then pull that lever when I tell you to."

"This one?" she asked, pointing to a large piece of metal, jutting out just below the time rotor.

"No, that one would probably kill us both," he said, smiling at her despite the madness surrounding them, reminding her of the many times he'd tried to show her how to pilot the TARDIS. "That one," he corrected, pointing at a tiny brass switch that seemed to her to be miles away from where he'd gestured.

"All right," she said, holding down the orange button and letting her other hand hover over the switch.

"Now!" he said, and she closed her fingers on the switch and flipped it upwards.

A flash of light from the monitor caught her attention, and she turned her head in time to see a large, angry-looking crack growing even more immense, undulating as it hung before them in space.

"It's working," the Doctor said, watching over her shoulder before turning back to the controls. "I just need a moment. It only has to hold for one—"

A pain like she had never felt before consumed her, causing her to cry out in pain and almost knocking her to her knees. The only thing that kept her on her feet was the the thought that the button she was holding down could be all that stood between them and utter disaster.

"Rose!" She caught a glimpse of his face as he raced around the controls, yelling, "No!" over and over again. His movements took on a violence she'd never seen before. He was talking to himself, words that held no meaning for her but one: something had gone very, very wrong.

She tried to speak, to tell him she could hang on, but she couldn't get the words out. Every inch of her sang out with pain. She didn't know how long she could take it, but she knew that she had to give the Doctor as much time as she possibly could.

She could hear him yelling still, but she was only able to pick out scattered words. Feedback. Overflow. Unstable. Dangerous.

An alarm began to ring out, drowning even the deafening noise of the time rotor. Rose struggled for breath as her muscles contracted in response to the waves of agony washing over her. She fixated on the button, no longer able to follow what the Doctor was doing.

His hand covered hers and lifted it away from the controls. Even through the pain, she could feel exactly what it was. It was the moment of their defeat.

"I'm sorry, Rose," he whispered. "I can't hold it. The feedback loop will kill you both if I don't—"

He let the sentence hang, unfinished, in the air between them. She screamed, collapsing into him and beating his chest in frustration. The pain was getting worse with each passing second, and she knew he was right.

"I'm sorry. I have to. The breach won't hold much longer. I won't let this kill you."

She fought to open her eyes as he bent his head and gave her one last kiss, trying to will away the pain long enough to memorize him. She thought if she could just capture it, drink him into her very pores, maybe some part of her would remember.

He pulled his head back, still holding her with one arm as the other moved to the panel. Time seemed to slow until the moment he turned one last dial, and then everything went black.

\---

Her alarm sounded, breaking her out of a deep sleep as her hand found the off switch before she'd even opened her eyes. She sat up, catching sight of the suit she'd laid out over a chair the night before as her vision cleared. Another day at Torchwood was ahead of her, and she swung her legs to the side to get up.

As she felt the softness of the carpet against her feet, she had a moment of disorientation. She'd expected the floor to be metal and cold, and it took her a long moment to remember the last time she'd felt a floor like that beneath her feet.

She sat at the edge of the bed, realizing she must have had another dream of the past, of the Doctor. She could almost remember what had happened, getting a flash of his face, a memory of the sound of the rotor, but then it was gone. Like all her dreams, it was just that, a painful reminder of a life she could never return to.

She willed it away, not wanting to fall back into the depression that had taken her long, horrible months to climb out of. She had no choices left but to move on, and she forced herself to get up.

The hot spray of the shower soon played over her back, and she tried to imagine it washing away the thoughts of what she knew she couldn't have. She couldn't live in those dreams. She could only hope that someday, the feeling of being trapped would subside and her new life would feel more real to her.

\---

In the TARDIS, the Doctor helped Martha to her feet. His explanation for her blackout, that she'd lost her balance and hit her head when they'd landed, didn't seem quite real to her, but she couldn't quite put her finger on why.

She really began to think it strange when he turned his back to her and headed down the corridor, telling her only that he had a few things to sort out, and not to be worried if he disappeared for a bit. She heard a door slam not long after he left her.

It was two days before she saw him again. He found her as she was poking curiously around the control room and acted as though no time at all had passed, wordlessly pointing at a place at the TARDIS controls for her to brace herself as he worked around her, piloting the ship.

"There we go, perfect landing," he said, looking quite pleased with himself, but something about him still seemed off. "Which isn't easy, in such a tight spot," he added, scratching the back of his head and looking resolutely away from her.

"We should be used to tight spots by now. Where are we?"

"The end of the line," he answered, as she ran to the door. She looked back. "No place like it."

She opened the door and her face fell. She was staring at her own flat.


End file.
